


They Find Him in Mexico

by A41



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Content, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Is That Still a Thing??, Mental Health Issues, One Shot, Post-Season/Series 03, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Season/Series 04, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:26:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27457948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A41/pseuds/A41
Summary: It’s night, and it’s almost too late, but when Scott and Malia drag an unconscious Derek out of his grave; Stiles takes the first full breath he’s managed since he walked into the loft looking for a friend and only finding shell casings.They don’t call the sheriff.
Relationships: Derek Hale & Stiles Stilinski, Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Lydia Martin & Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 6
Kudos: 90





	They Find Him in Mexico

**Author's Note:**

> *Dusts off old fandom*  
> *Yeets fic*  
> *Runs*
> 
> (Seriously though, read the tags for warnings, folks)

They find him in Mexico.

Mostly.

It’s night by the time they find the ruins, by the time they track the faint _thump thump_ of a dying heart to a simple stretch of vine-covered wall. They break through the rubble into a small room, a tomb really, and try not to choke on the wolfsbane hanging heavy in the air. It’s night, and it’s almost too late, but when Scott and Malia drag an unconscious Derek out of his grave; Stiles takes the first full breath he’s managed since he walked into the loft looking for a friend and only finding shell casings.

They don’t call the sheriff.

— — —

Stiles won’t stop _checking_. Isaac knows what Derek looks like, (dead, he looks dead) and maybe that’s why he hasn’t pointed out how Stiles keeps reaching for a limp wrist every few minutes. Two fingers against the pulse, a pause, then a quiet breath as he pulls his hand back to his lap. Isaac would mock him for it, if he wasn’t so busy straining his hearing to catch every labored breath.

Isaac doesn’t notice the first time Derek wakes up.

The intermittent flashes of light along the bumpy road are enough to illuminate the back seat of Chris’s SUV, and between one flash and the next, green eyes open. They don’t respond though, not when Isaac calls his name or shakes him, drawing Stiles attention. They just keep staring, even after Stiles starts in on him, talking then coaxing, then slapping, harder and harder till Isaac grabs his arm. He shakes it off, mutters, “It’s always worked before.” and turns away. Isaac meets Chris’s eyes in the mirror. Expression hard, Chris shakes his head, and Isaac settles back in his seat.

The second time Derek wakes up, really wakes up, is when Isaac knows things have gone irreparably wrong. It starts with his eyes, wide now, and broadcasting fear in a way he never let himself around his Betas before. It continues with the flinch he makes away from Isaac, someone who ~~is—~~ was pack and pack mean safety until you’re dead, until you leave the others with a screaming hole that reeks of dirty water and empty blue eyes. It ends when Derek turns to Stiles like he’s someone he trusts, like he’s not just the tagalong, and burrows into his shoulder. He’s gasping out words faster than he’s taking in air and Isaac’s not sure Stiles is even catching it all, he’s just a human; but Stiles just pulls Derek close, tight and hard enough to _hurt_ , and looks out the window at the unchanging night sky.

— — —

The Sheriff meets them at Deaton’s. It went like this: Stiles said he had a school trip, John called Melissa, she called Chris, and Chris was in goddamn Mexico with a bunch of high school seniors.

Stiles doesn’t answer his phone the first twelve times John calls. John falls asleep at the table, maps and some of Stiles’s journals spread over the top; his phone in one hand, whisky in the other. In the morning, he rubs the sleep out of his eyes, unsticks the map of Mexico from his cheek, and reaches across the table to where his phone shows a solitary message.

Stiles. 4:27am.

“Dad. I’m… look, it’s Derek. And-and it was one thing when he was off traveling the world, finding himself or whatever, but—” A harsh breath comes across the line. “We think Kate has him. Oh, and yeah, plot twist! She’s not dead; it’s like the less redeemable qualities you have, the better chance you have of coming back. God, no wonder Alli—” John grips the phone tight as his son cuts off again. “We’re getting him back, and I’m fine, and everything’s going to be fine.” He sounds flat, like he doesn’t have the energy to believe what he’s saying. Like he knows things are long past ever being fine again.

Now, looking at Hale sitting on the cold metal table, completely blank as Deaton checks him over, John thinks his son might’ve been right.

“He hasn’t talked at all,” Stiles says. “Not since…” He shares a quick look with the Lahey boy, and stops. “Not that that’s all that different.”

“Stiles, he’s traumatized.” Scott chides.

“We’re all traumatized.” comes the quick reply. Scott laughs like it’s a joke, but John can hear the edge of truth in his son’s dark humor. It’s not a joke. None of it is.

John watches the Hale boy sit there with no response to his son’s sharp tongue, and wonders how many times a person can break before they just stop being a person. He wonders how close his son is to that number.

— — —

The problem is, they don’t really know what to _do_ with him. Derek’s always been on the edge of the group, for all that he’s in the middle of everything else. So they let him go back to the loft and hope for the best.

They all think it’s a bad idea for Peter to see him. Scott watches Stiles’s furtive meeting with Chris Argent, planning “Contingencies” for when Peter invariably screws them… Derek, over. Scott doesn’t know when “Contingencies” became more normal than plans; when lethal stopped being anathema; or when Scott stopped caring that it did. He just puts his head down and focuses on school, on the little animal heartbeats that don’t know the difference between good and bad. Maybe Scott doesn’t know either.

— — —

Each time Stiles goes to visit Derek, when he’s climbed the stairs and stands outside the door, his heart starts to pick up, faster and faster until he’s sure that it’s racing loud enough for even unenhanced ears to hear. It doesn’t settle back down until the door opens and he sees a familiar face instead of bullet holes. Derek always lets him in.

They don’t talk much; they don’t need to, just being with someone who won’t kill you and won’t leave you, and doesn’t care that you were born different is more than enough, most days.

On the days they do talk, though, they don’t hold back. Stiles will start complaining about college forms, or Derek will mention a book he’s read, in the quiet voice he’s developed since _then_ , or Stiles will sit on the couch and let all his guilt and grief about his mom come spilling out while Derek just listens and leans over to press their shoulders together. And if Derek sometimes references conversations they’ve had that Stiles doesn’t remember? Well, Stiles has spent more than one late night driving out demons with research; he knows all the terms, from _PTSD_ to _maladaptive daydreaming._ He knows when to play along, when letting a person feel _safe_ is more important than the truth.

It’s nice, sometimes, to pretend; and when Stiles leaves for college, he misses him.

— — —

Chris leaves Derek alone, he figures the kid would probably be happy if he never saw an Argent again, if the kid even still has the capacity after everything. He’s sure that the other’s visit him, though. They have to realize the kid has no one, ~~that Chris’s family took everyone~~ , right? Then he thinks of Isaac’s face, the weight he can see, at night after he thinks Chris is in bed sleeping (like the Oni didn’t take that too). These kids lived through a war, and it was his family who helped bring them there. Him and his wife, and his father, and… Kate. His little Katie turned into a monster long before the bite took hold.

He still doesn’t know why she left Derek in that tomb, why she took him to begin with. He won’t ask the kid straight out, it wouldn’t be fair of him. Derek might open up to the Stilinski kid, could have already, during that late-night drive when he was still shock shredded and slurring. Though Stiles is at college now, and it’s far more likely that Derek forced down whatever Kate did to him. Did to him _this time_. The kid’s going to run out of space to shove things into if his life keeps going this way.

Something about that makes Chris go to the loft. There’s no answer at the door, but he can hear water running, so he heads inside.

— — —

Chris sees the blood and remembers his wife. She chose to die rather than become something she hated.

Chris chose to let her.

He chooses differently this time.

— — —

Derek lives on his own for a month before Chris Argent packs him up and moves him into the apartment he shares with Isaac. Chris storms in carrying the single duffel Isaac remembers from the station, then the house, then the loft. Derek trails after, blank. He doesn’t say anything, and Chris doesn’t either, so it’s not until Isaac goes to the loft and sees all the blood in the bathtub that he grasps what happened.

He wonders if Chris is angry at Derek for choosing to throw his life away when his daughter will never get to make that choice. Isaac thinks he himself might be, a bit; when he dreams of golden hair, a hard-earned smile, and eyes filled with determined fire. He’s probably angry. He doesn’t know. He’s just tired.

— — —

They no longer _fit_ , Lydia finds, when she tries to go to college. She and Stiles pack their bags and get an apartment off campus in one of those buildings so full of students it might as well be a dorm. But they have their own kitchen, and bathroom, and space for when Stiles ends up in a panic attack on the floor.

They’re coming home from a war that no one knew happened. No one knows why they jump when things get quiet or why Stiles keeps a bat in his jeep and they both carry pepper spray. They’re seen as the kids who don’t care enough about hooking up, who are way too close to be ‘just friends’. Their peers laugh when Lydia doesn’t drink at late night parties because for them, being drunk at night isn’t suicide.

Stiles drinks anyway. A lot. Lydia brings it up once, and Stiles doesn’t come back to the apartment for four days. Lydia doesn’t talk the whole time, afraid if she opens her mouth a scream will come out and she really _will_ be alone. She hugs him when he finally stumbles in, and he freezes up, stiff and unnatural. Then he hugs her back like _she_ was the one missing and whispers apologies into her hair. She doesn’t bring up the drinking again.

Their social life is… well. She’s still beautiful and smart, and she hasn’t forgotten how to play the game. She can make as many friends as she wants, and she does, right until a sweet girl calls her her _best friend_ and Lydia dumps her drink all over the girl’s head. That night, she cuddles with Stiles on the couch and he plays with her hair until they fall asleep. They sleep right through their alarms and the first twenty minutes of class. Lydia doesn’t try making friends after that.

Stiles is… Stiles has grown into himself. He’s still wicked smart, and sharp and sarcastic, and he doesn’t care what anyone at school thinks of him, barring Lydia.

He’s absolutely fearless. He’ll come back black and blue from a night at the bar, grinning because he stepped in when someone started up the harassment and, “They laughed when they saw me, Lyds, but then I decked him like Chris showed me…”

He almost gets kicked out when he attacks a TA. He doesn’t say anything either, after he gets let off with a warning, just goes to his room and locks the door. She knows he’s calling Derek; it’s not till the next morning that she knows why. “That Stilinski kid got into it with Jared, over some girl. Dude, isn’t she like fifteen? Gross!”

She can see Stiles getting more and more spun; more jokes, more study, more alcohol. She waits for him to explode; punch someone until they don’t get back up, have a panic attack in class, get alcohol poisoning. Open his mouth and let out the scream that’s been building since he first went into the woods and came back with the woods in him.

When the breaking-point finally comes, it shocks her with its quiet. Stiles picks up a call, says “Hi Chris” and walks into his room for privacy. When he comes back his eyes are red and full, thumb running restlessly over his wrist and croaks “Lyds, he tried… He…” before sitting on the kitchen floor and letting the tears stream down his face. She holds him through it, then gets in bed and lets him cling to her all night while softly, slowly he tells her how close he came to losing another one of his people. He doesn’t speak again.

They leave the next day.

— — —

Derek is sitting in Chris’s living room when Stiles comes busting into the apartment. He doesn’t yell, just pulls Derek up and holds onto him, hissing “Don’t you dare, don’t you dare,” over and over into the side of his neck. The room smells of salt, but whether that’s him or Stiles he can’t tell. He just closes his eyes and breathes.

— — —

Things go back to normal, after; that’s what they say. But they all know what they mean: the _after_ has become normal, fractured and different as it is. 

They laugh and they live, because they survived. Because others who deserved better will never get the chance. On the good days, they don’t even remember to think that they were the unlucky ones.

And once again, they find themselves in Beacon Hills.

Mostly.


End file.
